


The girl least likely (The girl most likely)

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Actor RPF, Bandom, Fall Out Boy, Gossip Girl RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hipsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Other boys want to touch her tits, Pete Wentz wants to feel up her childhood. Michelle should know better. It turns out she doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The girl least likely (The girl most likely)

 

 

 

It starts, as all things in her life seem to, without Michelle realising until afterwards. It's a rather bad excuse really, all things considered. But that's the way it is. Sort of. Whatever. Or maybe it's just the way she is. Michelle's never good with those sorts of things. She supposes she should be. Should keep an eye on all those loose ends and sharp corners, but well, she only has so much energy and so much time.

He introduced himself to her. She’s at a party when he walks up to her and introduces himself. Just like that.

There's something manic in his eyes when he tells her his name, something worn out and worn thin all at once. But a good deal of charm covers it and, really, Michelle's been in the business since she was a kid. She’s charming too. Even if she wasn’t, he isn't the first person she’s met with eyes like that, nor with a veneer of charisma to match. She can deal. She always has. So when he talks - PR self promotion crap and lovely too raw things he should save for behind closed doors - she smiles and smile prettily.

She’s good at that.

She would be though. She’s been doing this for a while now. Longer than him at least.

Maybe once or twice she accidentally lets things slips; lets her mouth run away with things. Still. Even after all the years she's been in the business. It's pretty pathetic really. (She's almost 100% certain that's why the Gossip Girl producers don't tell any of them – not even Leighton who has a mouth like a steel trap – anything about the next season.) But well, she doesn't think he's the sort of boy to take anything she says to heart. Or listen. It’s things from his mouth, rather than hers, that reach his ears. She can tell. She knows his type. He’s charming thought. Deeply and utterly. A mess, sure. But a likable one – and that’s what counts. Not that it does. It’s okay though.

 

 

As a rule, Michelle doesn’t take things personally (though, perhaps she should have, because in the end that was the only thing she thinks he ever wanted).

 

 

He turns up now and then, and then, suddenly, all the time.

She knows who he is now, Pete Wentz. Not Pete Wentz a guy who told her about his mom and pill problem. But Pete Wentz, the one from the band with a hit in the top 40 and a record that’s gone platinum, the one made up of insomniac eyes rimmed with too much black eyeliner and a best friend she's not (good enough to be) introduced to and a finger in a million or so pies. It’s a bit of a surprise when he remembers hers. Remembers all of it – every single word that made up her lazy her slips of tongue.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asks, looking at her intensely, restlessly.

She shrugs. She doesn’t know.

The seam at the back of her dress itches against her spine; he takes a step closer and acts as if he only did it because someone behind him pushed him. He’s standing too close now. One of his hands finds its way to the small of her back. He doesn’t drop his gaze from hers. Opening his mouth, he talks instead of trying to kiss her.

It’s strange. Or he is. Maybe both.

Is this something boys actually do?

The crowd around them is large and deep down every single person in it has loose lips. She should know better. She should. She’s been around longer than he has. He doesn’t understand. He really, truly, doesn’t. He talks and acts like he does. But he doesn’t. He talks a lot. He acts a lot to. He’s almost as good as she it.

But that’s not saying much. Not really.

 

 

Pete wants to know everything about her. He spends hours and hours asking about her grade school friends and science projects and spends hours more quizzing her about her politics, her opinions on this and that. Everything. Even then, he will have with more things he needs to know about her when she wakes in the morning.

For some reason, Pete finds her camp roles endlessly fascinating. It was Michael Caine who said good roles pay the same as bad roles. He also said even bad films pay for a good life. More or less. Michelle thinks he's right on both counts. She also thinks Pete likes (to think he's) fucking (a teenager(s)). Personally, she finds sex terribly boring. Tedious even. She has never known what this means.

“You just haven’t slept with me,” he had once boasted.

Then she did.

(She let him think whatever he wanted to after they were done).

 

 

It's hard to talk to Pete.

It's difficult to date Pete (which she ends up doing).

He arrives late and too early. He says too much. Michelle - she doesn’t know.

“New boy?” Alison teases, because she knows everything before everyone else. Always has.

“New man.” Sarah corrects; her tone saying far more than anybody wants to hear.

Michelle doesn’t know what to say.

She ends up shrugging.

Alison takes pity on her and changes the subject.

Michelle can tell both Alison and Sarah both think he needs to watch his mouth. She tries to approach him about it. But he takes that the wrong way.

 

 

Her mother spends most of her time getting her hair done, or her nails. Michelle doesn’t really know what else she does. As a kid, part of the time was devoted to driving to auditions. But those days are long over. Now Michelle joins her mother out on the patio in the sun and admires her freshly set hair and speculates.

"Peter called before you arrived. He said he couldn't get on to you."

_'Oh,’_ Michelle thinks and says. "Oh."

Her mother’s eyes flutter closed.

"Are you two serious?"

Michelle shrugs. Lately rather than bars or his unfurnished place, he takes her to parties and to premieres. The whole time they’re there she wonders the whole time, why? She would have gone to them anyway. Work is work after all. She doesn't really get it. Or rather, why he bothers.

 

***

 

(Her mother hugs her tightly when Michelle leaves. She doesn't let go, until Michelle's good and ready).

 

 

He can have good weeks. Weeks were he makes her laugh and she makes him smile in return. Weeks where they can talk shop and talk crap and fill hours with nothing in particular. Weeks where she can press him down into her sheets and he can touch her until she shakes. But then there are weeks where he just won't stop. Calls and calls and texts and texts and messages and messages and, okay, she might be a bitch, but she don't want to have her mother calling saying _‘that boy’_ rang for her. She just doesn't.

"So,” Michelle starts, because she supposes she should. (Pete isn’t going to).

Pete breathes down over the phone line; quick and shallow and self medicated.

“It’d be, like, totally great if my mom didn’t catch you going through the dumpster outside my apartment until after our first anniversary.”

She pitches her tone very carefully; a light edge of sarcasm – almost a joke, but not quite – mixed with an irreverent yet undeniable warning.

He takes it the wrong way again (this really, really shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does).

 

 

One day, it's like he suddenly knows all her friends and people she knows through other people and sure, she supposes it means something. But okay, she's been doing this for a while. It isn't her first time at the rodeo. But while her friends put up with him invading their social circles – he isn’t just content to know her friends, he wants to know her friend’s friends, and her friend’s friends’ friends. And their first, second, and third cousins. Their aunts and uncles too. Then just as suddenly as he had made himself known, he disappears.

He does this more often than he thinks.

“Oh, shit, fuck, sorry–”

“It’s cool,” she tells him even though it isn’t. “Just like, call or something.”

Her agent thinks he’s good publicity.

And there’s one thing Pete likes more than almost everything else is publicity. So mostly it works. Mostly they keep going.

She toes on the party line and he keeps his eyes on her until he doesn’t.

He thinks she doesn’t know. He thinks he’s so good at this. But she’s been doing it longer than both of them – Ashlee Simpson or no. Michelle's a lot of things, but she's not naive. Sure. Okay. She knows people look at her and can think she is. For all her roles and acting classes she's never totally been able to get rid of the earnestness in her eyes. Not totally. She also knows there are others and she knows when the others become Ashlee. Just Ashlee.

It's kind of embarrassing to be _that girl_. But then again, she figures it must be pretty embarrassing to be the other one.

 

 

In the end Michelle breaks up with him.

Whatever.

It doesn’t mean anything. It never did.

 

 

Sarah is sensible about the whole thing. Michelle tries to take her advice. She doesn't have many friends and she likes to think Sarah is her best one. She also likes to think of Sarah as her sister, but she knows exactly how that sounds. No. She isn't naive. She – she doesn't know if she's careless, or just only has so much to give.

Sometimes she sees Leighton or Blake around New York.

They look like they stepped out of wardrobe. Pressed and starched and tailored to a tee. Michelle isn't quite that good. She knows she should be. She lasts eighteen hour days on set in Valentino pumps and Yves Saint Laurent tribute's. But, well, she's not on set forever and when she gets home she looks at her (stylist pre-approved) wardrobe and well, what she wore the day before works more times than it doesn’t.

Okay, maybe she should have known better – she was at the airport when she heard the news about their engagment – but fuck.

Fuck.

And. And. And she's on the phone to Sarah, who Michelle trusts more than almost anyone, and she thinks it should be okay. Fair even. He's (not) getting married (to her). Okay. Except no, not okay. Because even though everyone knows what happened, apparently she can’t say a word about him or Ashlee or about anyone, because someone could (did) hear and then a call or text later everyone knew. And she is the bitch then. Or the pity party of one. Thank you, but no thank you.

 

 

For the record, her life goes on. Fuck what TMZ says.

 

 

Sure, for a little while she spends some time lying through her teeth; _'No. That never happened. I never said that. No way,’_ and _'I wish them both the best.'_ It’s all very practiced and pre-approved. It gets her some good press though. Okay, the 'good' part is questionable. For a while at least. Then Ashlee starts popping the zippers of her size zero dresses and it's not so bad to be the ex when the new wife looks like a shot gun bride.

“Fuck them,” Ed tells her in that arrogant English way of his.

He’ll learn better sooner or later.

In his trailer he smokes and swears and she watches him and tries to figure out if it will be sooner or later. Sometimes Chace joins them; all golden and straight, sharp teeth. He is the opposite of both of them. Once Ed and Michelle go out and hang with Chase and his boy band friends. Ed gives then all shit but somehow they find it, and him, endearing.

“They would,” he tells her afterwards when he decides to crash at her place. “They’re idiots.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” she tells him.

He smirks.

An hour or so later he crawls into her bed. It’s amazing how predictable men can be.

 

 

She sees Pete again, because of course she would.

Since her friends are still sort of his too, he comes over and he wedges his way into the conversation they’re having. He doesn’t pull her aside or even wait for her to go grab a drink. Maybe it’s just because it isn’t a party, but an event, or maybe it’s just because he’s never learnt better (no matter how many times the lesson is taught), but when the conversation breaks up and people’s attention splinters he looks at her and instead of apologising he says;

“Hey, we’re still friends, right?”

And she smiles because she knows this one. “Right.”

Everyone’s friends in L.A.

 

 

 


End file.
